Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER ONE The Major Malfunction

GREAT FALLS, MONTANA

December 5, 2024

Henry hunched over the wooden bar and took a pull of draft beer. Country music blasted from the jukebox in the corner and three air force pilots at the other end of the bar ordered shots of tequila. The dive was smoky and dark and the air stank of bar rot. Outside, the wind moaned while a blizzard dumped snow on the Montana town.

The divorce papers under Henry’s parka were heavy and seemed to burn. Maybe he should have seen it coming, but he didn’t and now he felt betrayed and desolate. The papers were dated three weeks earlier, but he’d just gotten them because it took time to track him down. He’d read the document three times, staring and barely comprehending while the weight of the words penetrated his brain. His wife was demanding full custody of Taylor, giving him only limited visits with his baby girl. The complaint, on stark black and white letterhead, listed verbal abuse and PTSD to justify the inevitable irreconcilable differences.

What is wrong with me? Something is broken, misfiring. Not just one thing, maybe.

A darkness had crawled into Henry, an alien, invasive thing, and he’d never faced the truth of it until now, realizing he’d lost the love of his life. He was not sure how long the darkness had been there lurking around the nooks and crannies of his soul. Years. It had been eating away at him and he hadn’t wanted to admit it. Destroying him from within while he fought for his country; it was insidious and cruel, a killing poison.

“Hey, soldier,” one of the pilots shouted. “Have a shot on me.

“No thanks, man,” Henry replied.

“Just drink it. We’re celebrating.”

“No,” Henry said.

He needed to be left alone to think. Was there any way he could win Suzanne back? Were they that far gone now? There had to be something he could do. He could change. He could leave the Wolves. Settle down in Key West with her and Taylor and leave his uniform for good. Banish that darkness inside with sunshine. He loved her with a fierceness that surprised him sometimes, and he was certain, for all the distance and strife between them, that she loved him too. She’d given up on him, and he could understand why. He was convinced, though, that she wanted to believe again. He had to give her a good reason.

The pilots swaggered down the bar and plopped onto stools next to him.

“You’re a southern boy,” one of them said. “What do you think about this secession business?”

Henry clenched his jaw. It was all over the news.

“I’d rather not talk about it, guys. Just minding my own business.”

“I’ll bet you’re all for it, huh?”

“You’re drunk, and I’m out,” Henry said. He stood up, left a twenty on the bar, and attempted to walk away.

“What’s the matter,” the oldest of the pilots said, in Henry’s face now, eyes bloodshot and eager. “You some kind of lefty? You like these fascists?”

The pilot shoved Henry on the shoulder.

Henry Wilkins was not the kind of man to start a fight, but he’d ended a few. He tried to step around the pilots.

The young guy wound up for a swing. So be it.

Henry punched him in the throat and smashed the older guy in the face with an elbow. The third pilot tried to crack Henry over the head with a bottle of Budweiser. Henry stepped forward into the blow. The glass bottle smacked Henry in the eye, and he staggered backwards, Roman candles exploding his skull.

“Now you’re gonna hurt,” the pilot said, eyes raging as he coiled for another attack.

Henry lashed out with his knee, catching the man in the crotch. The pilot doubled over in pain and he howled when Henry pounded him on both ears.

The three pilots were on the ground, writhing and groaning, when Henry walked out of the bar and into the snow. The sheriff picked him up before he made it to the street. The bartender must have called before the fight began. Maybe she knew those boys on the floor.

Henry Wilkins opened his right eye at the sound of keys jangling against the metal bars of the cell. His other eye seemed glued shut, encrusted with blood and swollen. His back ached from sleeping on a metal slab.

Uh-oh.

Colonel Bragg, wearing combat fatigues and a murderous scowl, towered just outside the cell. Beside the colonel, a full-bellied, red-faced local sheriff fumbled with a key ring.

Henry pushed himself to his feet, had to catch his balance on the concrete wall, before managing a salute.

“Sir,” he said. Henry’s voice was raw.

“What is your major malfunction?” the colonel growled. He was not screaming. That was not his way. He was straight backed and quiet now.

“Sir, I do apologize, I know I—”

“You apologize? You’re sorry? ”

The sheriff slid the steel door open. Henry remained standing, staring into the face of disappointment, anger, and disgust, the colonel boring into him with these things in no particular order.

“He’s all yours,” the sheriff said. The colonel and the sheriff turned heel.

Henry followed Colonel Bragg through the hallway, a booking room, and then out the front door into the snow. The wind whipped his face, but that was nothing compared to the lashing he knew he was about to receive. A navy-blue Crown Vic waited in the parking lot; a uniformed driver kept the engine idling. The colonel stepped into the front seat, and Henry slid into the back.

The colonel swiveled, training baleful eyes upon Henry. “With all that’s going on in the country right now, you decide to get into a fight off base? I don’t care that your team wasn’t on deck; you know better.”

“Sir—”

“Stow it, Wilkins. To say I’m deeply disappointed in you doesn’t begin to get it. The last thing this unit needs right now is any kind of scrutiny. If I didn’t need every man right now, I’d boot you. I still might.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t care what you’ve got going on in your personal life. You are elite. Act like it.”

“Copy that, sir.”

“You will be confined to quarters until further notice.” The voice of seething wrath was barely contained.

“Yes sir.” Henry took it. He accepted this because it was fair.

The sedan wound through gray streets and the tires made a hissing sound on the wet Montana road. Henry’s head pounded in rhythm to the windshield wipers slapping back and forth while big flakes swirled in the pale morning light. The main gate to Malmstrom Air Force Base was just ahead. O-six-hundred. He’d been in jail since about midnight.

Henry wanted to explain that while he knew there were no excuses, there were reasons, and that’s not quite the same thing. There was context, at least. He wanted to tell Colonel Bragg that Suzanne had served him with divorce papers the morning before, that she was trying to take his child from him. Tell the colonel the last op they’d gone on was wrong. That he was sick and tired of following orders that came down from desk warriors and politicians who seemed bent on getting people killed for no reason. That those pilots he’d left on the barroom floor had it coming, and he hadn’t gone looking for a fight. That he was hurting, and it was more than his marriage inflicting the pain.

Suzanne was in Key West, writing her romance novels and basking in the sun while Henry had been hunting down terrorists from Kabul to Rio to Cheyenne. When he thought about that, the serpentine thing coiled around his heart seemed to convulse, and his vision narrowed, tinged with red and violence.

They’d been married for eleven years, and most of them were good ones. They were a team, the two of them against the world. She endured the frequent moves and long deployments. She used to wait on the tarmac for him with a sign saying “Welcome Home!” and then wrap her arms around him with fervent kisses and then they’d stay in bed for a week. She’d lie on his chest and listen to his stories and jokes and he’d run his fingers through her long honey hair and she would make him feel whole again. They talked about her writing and built castles in the clouds together, the vacations they would take, the boat on davits at a dock they would build where the water was warm, and she was beautiful and he was good.

When he’d separated from the 75th and joined the Wolf Pack, she’d been happy for him. When she wanted to purchase a home in Key West to be closer to her father, he acquiesced, even though it meant most of the time he was alone in Tennessee in a dismal one-bedroom flat. When Taylor had been born, Henry was terrified and overjoyed; something seemed to shift or tear in Suzanne. Resentment began to creep in to her eyes and she started using words like “incompatible,” and when he came home from an operation, sometimes the house was dark. They argued about politics. They fought over money. When they had no money, they hadn’t cared about it. Now that she was earning six-figure advances, it was an issue. Henry recognized that while they argued over money, the real issue was his job. Money seemed to be a way of fighting about it without actually addressing the underlying problem.

He planned on getting out of the Pack, working the dive and fishing charter business with his old friend Bart, but then the country started to slide into hell, and Henry couldn’t justify quitting. He felt needed. He loved his country in a way that transcended duty, and he loved his brothers-in-arms. The domestic terror attacks, the hate groups, images of slain children kept him awake at night. He could not walk away. He was a warrior.

Now he was paying for it.

The last time he’d seen Suzanne, back in October, he’d seen hardness in her eyes, a resolution.

“Are you having an affair?” he’d said.

They were lounging at the pier in Key West, watching a glorious sunset, drinking frozen margaritas. A band was massacring a Jimmy Buffet song, and the air smelled like conch fritters and coconut oil. She was lithe and tan in a sundress. She knew he hated tourists and crowds, but she had wriggled and cajoled and made it clear she was ready for a date night.

He had to ask. “So?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“Well, there’s something.”

“I’m just busy with my book tour.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Let’s dance.”

“If you’re not happy, tell me, for God’s sake. There’s something.”

“No. You’re just jumpy. Realizing you don’t deserve me.” She giggled and kissed him on the mouth, and she tasted like tequila and lust and hope.

Over the last year, he’d felt her eyes, though, flat with veiled disdain when she thought he wasn’t looking, smelled the condescension at wine tastings and book releases and art galleries. He’d heard the snickers and she’d heard the screaming in the middle of the night. And he’d endured because that’s what you do. Soldier on; find your balls, never quit.

The first question from one of these clowns was always, “So what do you do in the army?”

“Logistics and support,” was the pat answer. He couldn’t tell the truth. Interest would fade, the condescension would begin, and Henry would watch it happen, predictable and infuriating and full of pretentious merlot and cheese. He did not care what those fools thought about him, but it did matter what the love of his life believed. She knew he was involved in special operations of some sort, but she resented it.

And then, there with the Key West sunset and the music and margaritas and long blonde hair, she’d seemed to be all right and not so distant. She’d pressed herself against him and the sky was painted pink and purple and there was a baby at home he wanted to get to know better. He’d pushed his doubts back behind carefully constructed walls, subdued the darkness.

The sedan deposited Henry in front of the barracks he shared with thirty other members of the Wolves for the moment. Colonel Bragg had no more harsh words, probably because he was engaged in a heated conversation with some egghead at NSA over his comm. The chain of command was getting complicated, but that was beyond Henry’s pay grade.

Henry staggered into the spartan building, found his rack, and collapsed into it. The long room held two rows of bunks, and the soldiers slept and tossed and snored and cursed in their sleep.

He closed his eyes. His head throbbed from the blow he’d gotten from the bottle. He had regrets, and there was no way for him to escape the consequences.

If only… Two of the sorriest, whiniest, most pathetic words in the English language. If only what? If Texas hadn’t decided to secede from the United States… If that last op here in Montana had gone differently… If I hadn’t joined the Wolves… If Momma hadn’t been a worthless pill head who ran out on her family… If Dad had been around more instead of banging nails to keep a roof over my head.

If only, then what? The world is tough, and there’s nothing that’s supposed to be easy about it. You pick yourself up and you soldier on and suck it up.

Henry despised self-pity. He preferred self-denial, self-control, and self-confidence. His father had instilled this in him from the time Henry could walk. His chosen family, the United States Army, had reinforced it. His experience in war taught him the virtues of following his personal creed: “You may destroy me but you will not defeat me.” He’d stolen that from Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea. It captured how he looked at life. Santiago fighting a perfect fish and sharks and time, and even at the end, not giving in to any of it. Undefeated because that’s how he chose to see it. Prepare for the next fight. Get up and grab your nuts and get ready for the next battle until you can’t do it anymore because you’re dead. Somewhere in there, if you’re lucky and strong and disciplined, there would be some glory in living. But you damn sure don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself, because when the moment comes for a perfect sunset, you miss the light and color. You miss it because you’re too busy embracing the darkness inside.

Colonel Bragg made a valid point. Henry seemed to have a major malfunction, and he needed to fix it.

The country he loved had a major malfunction, too, but Henry was too exhausted to contemplate choices and consequences on that scale and he slept.

Henry dreamed about Operation Snowshoe. His dream was factual, for the most part, although some things did not happen exactly the way he dreamed.

The Montana ground was flat and covered with snow and the world was shades of green and white. The heads-up display on his contact lenses was equipped with microchips connected wirelessly to a relay implanted in his neck. The HUD relayed a constant stream of information. He could switch from his own field of sight to views from any of the hundred drones in the area, and cycle through infrared and heat signatures with no more than a thought. The Integrated Infantry Combat System, or ICS, allowed him to communicate with his fellow soldiers on the ground, command, and any other assets involved in the assault. The HUD revealed more than three hundred people in the compound ahead. There were guards in towers, and four on a perimeter patrol. Most of the people were sleeping.

In Montana, as always, there were few assets because the operation was not actually taking place in the eyes of the military or the government. Plausible deniability was the reason the Pack had been formed. More clandestine than the Navy SEALs or even Delta, the Wolves existed to solve problems within the United States, the kinds of problems that could not be dealt with by courts, local police, or the media. They crushed violent threats to the United States of America by any means necessary. Intelligence from the FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA, and the NSA filtered into the small, nondescript headquarters of the force, located in Nashville, Tennessee. They were ostensibly attached to the Tennessee Air National Guard. Aerial operations were often supported by the Night Stalkers out of Fort Campbell. They usually traveled via commercial aircraft, sitting beside unsuspecting civilians on the way from Nashville to Phoenix or New York or Billings. In two years with the Wolves, Henry had inserted by submarine, ultralight, and parachute into places where men tried to kill him when he got there. In Montana, he and the other members of the Wolf Pack had fast-roped from stealthy Blackhawks modified with ceramic tiles and quiet engines.

They’d humped it for a few miles over rolling hills and deep snow until the compound came into sight, then set up a perimeter for the assault.

The drones, each roughly the size of a bumblebee, flitted throughout the compound, relaying precise, real-time information on the position of targets. Some of the drones flew down the air-filtration system into the labyrinth underground, where the group of rebels had converted an ICBM missile complex into a fortress. The government had been selling those off for years to civilian bidders.

In this particular complex, there were houses aboveground, and there were children sleeping in those houses.

“Bugs in position,” came the voice in his head. The ICS allowed wireless signals to be interpreted as sound, thanks to the embedded chip connected to Henry’s brain. “Confirmation acquired. Radioactive materials, firearms, and munitions stockpiles.”

“Range, one hundred meters,” Henry said, although he did not actually speak. He thought, and the thought was converted to speech. It had taken practice and training; eventually he’d gotten used to it and no longer felt uncomfortable utilizing the system. His life depended upon it.

“Wolf One, clear to engage,” came the reply.

Henry crossed the open ground, the world still and silent in crisp shades of green and white. His snowshoes impeded his progress only slightly, and his steps were deliberate and sure. Two targets in a guard tower went down. The suppressed weapons carried by the soldiers muted both sound and muzzle flashes. The Wolves closed in for the kill. People in the buildings were up and moving around. They had been alerted to the attack, through motion sensors, pressure detectors, or drones of their own.

Two men came from the door of the nearest squat building, assault rifles in their hands. Henry fired as he came forward. A short burst for each man. The suppressor making a metallic cough in the green night, the submachine gun bucking against his shoulder. Henry kept moving ahead, switching his vision so that he could see the heat signatures behind the walls ahead. Bodies, some tall and some small, milling about. More heading for the door. Henry dropped to one knee. Thirty meters.

A knot of men emerged from the building, firing automatic weapons into the darkness. Henry heard the rounds zipping over his head like angry hornets. His weapon bucked and clacked, and his fellow soldiers fired and kept moving forward the way they had been trained to do. The men emerging from the building died before they took three paces.

“Bugs are hot,” said the voice in Henry’s head.

“Negative! Negative!” he screamed back with a scream that was not vocalized but was searing thought. They could clear the buildings aboveground themselves. No reason to use the bugs. Mission objectives were to neutralize the threat posed by the group and gather intel on related militia groups. There weren’t supposed to be kids here.

The drones did what they did best. They killed. Some of them were armed with high explosives, some with a single charge. All were locked on to targets, some big and some small.

There was screaming and burning, and sometimes it was Henry and sometimes it wasn’t, but in his dream, it was all one.

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

Suzanne’s air was low and she was deeper than she should have been. Hold still, damn you! I’ve followed you all over this reef and you refuse to act like a grouper. Turn, there you go. Look at me, nice and slow. The large fish hovered above a bleached-out mound of coral, turning with effortless grace, presenting his head to her.

She had chased the fish down the sloping reef from a depth of sixty feet to more than one hundred forty. The sea fans, all shades of blue, did not care, nor did the snapper, or the moray eel poking its head from a hole. Death was part of life in the ocean, and the reef was a constant riot of killing and fleeing.

The school of barracuda hovering to the right, torpedoes with teeth, waited. They knew an easy meal when they saw one, and there was nothing easier than picking off a speared fish. She’d seen it enough to know. They flashed quick and silver and strong, predators, scavengers, hunters. She hoped they would lose interest, but they’d hung around. She could not shoot the grouper, hang around at two safety stops, and then bring the fish back onto the boat. The fish would be gone. Just the head left, if she was lucky.

She checked her air one last time, looked at the waiting barracuda, and bade farewell to her grouper. She began to kick toward the surface, letting air bleed into her BC to increase buoyancy. Not in any hurry, watching her bubbles rise around her at the same pace, and listening to the crackling of the reef as parrotfish ate at it and motors plowed over it. She found the anchor line, added more air from her tank as she floated up toward the surface. At the first safety stop, she noticed her air was below 400 psi. She slowed her breathing and looked down at the reef below while she hung in the water, floated with the marvelous sense of weightlessness that came with neutral buoyancy. And she thought about Henry.

She loved him; that had never changed. But she couldn’t be married to him. When he was home he was brooding, prone to violent outbursts. He had changed. When he’d come home from a long deployment, back when he was still an Army Ranger, she knew he would be moody while he decompressed. He would adjust, and she was patient with him, and every time, the old Henry would emerge, a slow transformation, the sun burning through fog until it was full light.

Since he’d joined the Wolf Pack, there was less and less sunlight. Perhaps he took issue with what he was doing, but if so, he could never tell her. They no longer spoke about what it was he did for a living. There were occasional stories about fellow teammates, and how they’d seen this or that thing, but he couldn’t even tell her where he’d been. Communication was reduced to small talk. It was killing both of them.

She’d been trying to make it work, fighting for Henry, but she was sure he did not see it. He perceived threats. He accused her of having an affair, not realizing the real threat came from him.

The Pack had become a mistress, cruel and demanding and all consuming. There was nothing left of Henry to give her when he was home. She’d filed for divorce because she saw this would never change. Hope was gone. He would never leave his brothers. There would always be a crisis somewhere that kept pieces of him, stole parts of his soul.

And now, with talk of open war within the country, she knew it would be even worse. Whatever it was he did, he would be gone. She would be alone with Taylor. She decided it would be for the best to formalize the end. He would feel betrayed, blindsided. She didn’t see any other way.

Suzanne drifted up to fifteen feet for the last safety stop, checked her watch and her air. It was going to be close. The surface was light and the water gentle and she could hear the waves slap the hull of the boat. The school of barracuda had risen from the depths with her, and they eyed her with toothy curiosity as they floated through the clear ocean.